We Finally Have Proof That the Internet Is Worse::High-profile lawsuits against Google and Amazon have revealed Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives.
We Finally Have Proof That the Internet Is Worse::High-profile lawsuits against Google and Amazon have revealed Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives.
it’s so sad. this is going to sound pathetic, but – i remember in high school browsing reddit and twitter and 4chan and almost getting a buzz off of it, the interactions felt so cutting-edge, funny and fresh and perfectly transient, it felt like i had a voice for the first time, able to post and have people like what i posted.
and now we’re kinda just…going thru the motions and everything is worse and companies are just blindly nuking things we used to hold sacred
I hear you. When I was a teen, Internet was: A handful of focused websites or your buddies geocities / angelfire site.
Chatting in crazy chat rooms on IRC, and having your close friends on ICQ.
Using a dial up modem to play doom, Warcraft 2, red alert, duke nukem, quake, StarCraft, total annihilation… etc.
Those were fun times. Felt like the bleeding edge of tech… hiding out and having fun in places people haven’t even heard of.
Once upon a time, I had a 6-digit ICQ number.
That’s some OG shit there! I still remember my number. It was an 8 digit haha
Yeah, I’d give anything to remember the number. I’d make all my friends get accounts, just to flex.
Have a 7-digit one and just found out it still works.
I had one contact left on it called “brokenprincess” and it says she was last seen “a long time ago”.
Creepy shit. Just in time for Halloween.
I discovered IRC in the 2020s already (I am Gen Z so wasn’t even online before mid-2010s), and from what I’ve seen in the descriptions of the “old internet”, looks like some servers I am in preserved the spirit) Some people in the rooms also have their own cozy websites, including me)
Right on, I rejoined IRC during the COVID shutdowns. It’s just nice to be chatting somewhere where a company isn’t flooding me with advertisements and/or harvesting my data (that I can tell at least).
I know there is truth in that the internet I worse.
But I do wonder how much of our feeling that is worse is more based on the glamor of youth and nostalgia.
Part of that might be you though. Things that gave us thrills in our youth become bland when you get older. I could say the same thing about ICQ and AIM vs reddit, twitter, etc.
MSN Messenger man, what a great software. Also Winamp.